The Argus Pheasant Part 21

He ran his hands through his hair in nervous anxiety. Van Slyck contemplated his agitation with a darkening frown. "Is the fool going to pieces?" was the captain's harrowing thought. He clapped a hand on Muller's shoulder with an a.s.sumption of bluff heartiness.

"'Sufficient unto the day--' You know the proverb, _mynheer_," he said cheerfully. "There's nothing to worry about--we won't give him a chance at you for two weeks. Kapitein Enckel of the _Prins_ will probably bring him ash.o.r.e to-day. We'll receive him here; I'll bring my lieutenants over, and Cho Seng can make us a big dinner.

"To-night there will be schnapps and reminiscences, to-morrow morning a visit of inspection to the fort, to-morrow afternoon a _b.i.t.c.hara_ with the Rajah Wobanguli, and the day after a visit to Bulungan town. At night visits to w.a.n.g Fu's house and Marinus Blauwpot's, with cards and Hollands. I'll take care of him for you, and you can get your books in shape. Go to Barang, if you want to, the day we visit Rotterdam--leave word with Cho Seng you were called away to settle an important case.

Leave everything to me, and when you get back we'll have _mynheer_ so drunk he won't know a tax statement from an Edammer cheese."

Muller's face failed to brighten at the hopeful program mapped out by his a.s.sociate. If anything, his agitation increased.

"But he might ask questions to-day, _kapitein_--questions I cannot answer."

Van Slyck's lips curled. His thought was: "Good G.o.d, what am I going to do with this lump of jelly-fish?" But he replied encouragingly:

"No danger of that at all, _mynheer_. There are certain formalities that must be gone through first before a new resident takes hold. It would not be good form to kick his predecessor out of office without giving the latter a chance to close his books--even a pig of a Yankee knows that. Accept his credentials if he offers them, but tell him business must wait till the morning. Above all, keep your head, say nothing, and be as d.a.m.nably civil as though he were old Van Schouten himself. If we can swell his head none of us will have to worry."

"But my accounts, _kapitein_," Muller faltered.

"To the devil with your accounts," Van Slyck exclaimed, losing patience. "Go to Barang, fix them up as best you can."

"I can never get them to balance," Muller cried. "Our dealings--the rattan we shipped--you know." He looked fearfully around.

"There never was a _controlleur_ yet that didn't line his own pockets,"

Van Slyck sneered. "But his books never showed it. You are a book-keeper, _mynheer_, and you know how to juggle figures. Forget these transactions; if you can't, charge the moneys you got to some account.

There are no vouchers or receipts in Bulungan. A handy man with figures, like yourself, ought to be able to make a set of accounts that that ferret Sachsen himself could not find a flaw in."

"But that is not the worst," Muller cried despairingly. "There are the taxes, the taxes I should have sent to Batavia, the rice that we sold instead to Ah Sing."

"Good G.o.d! Have you grown a conscience?" Van Slyck snarled. "If you have, drown yourself in the bay. Lie, you fool, lie! Tell him the weevils ruined the crop, tell him the floods drowned it, tell him a tornado swept the fields bare, lay it to the hill Dyaks--anything, anything! But keep your nerve, or you'll hang sure."

Muller retreated before the captain's vehemence.

"But the _bruinevels_, _kapitein_?" he faltered. "They may tell him something different."

"Wobanguli won't; he's too wise to say anything," Van Slyck a.s.serted firmly. "None of the others will dare to, either--all we've got to do is to whisper Ah Sing's name to them. But there's little danger of any of them except the Rajah seeing him until after the _Prins_ is gone. Once she's out of the harbor I don't care what they say--no word of it will ever get back to Batavia."

His devilishly handsome smile gleamed sardonically, and he twisted his nicely waxed mustache. Muller's hands shook.

"_Kapitein_," he replied in an odd, strained voice, "I am afraid of this Peter Gross. I had a dream last night, a horrible dream--I am sure it was him I saw. I was in old de Jonge's room in the residency building--you know the room--and the stranger of my dream sat in old de Jonge's chair.

"He asked me questions, questions of how I came here, and what I have done here, and I talked and talked till my mouth was dry as the marsh gra.s.s before the rains begin to fall. All the while he listened, and his eyes seemed to bore through me, as though they said: 'Judas, I know what is going on in your heart.'

"At last, when I could say no more, he asked me: '_Mynheer_, how did Mynheer de Jonge die?' Then I fell on the ground before him and told him all--all. At the last, soldiers came to take me away to hang me, but under the very shadow of the gallows a bird swooped down out of the air and carried me away, away into the jungle. Then I awoke."

Van Slyck broke into scornful laughter.

"_Mynheer_, you had enough to worry about before you started dreaming,"

he said bluntly. "If you're going to fill your head with such foolishness I'll leave you to your own devices."

"But, _kapitein_, it might be a warning," Muller cried desperately.

"Heaven doesn't send ravens to cheat such rogues as you and I from the gallows, _mynheer_," Van Slyck mocked. "We might as well get ready to meet our new resident. I see a boat putting off from the ship."

CHAPTER XII

PETER GROSS'S RECEPTION

When Peter Gross stepped ash.o.r.e at the foot of the slope on which the fort and government buildings stood, three thousand pairs of eyes, whose owners were securely hidden in the copses and undergrowth for a quarter of a mile in both directions along the sh.o.r.e-line, watched his every movement. With the lightning celerity with which big news travels word had been spread through Bulungan town that the new resident was coming ash.o.r.e, and every inhabitant possessed of sound legs to bear him had run, crawled, or scrambled to a favorable patch of undergrowth where he could get a first glimpse of the _orang blanda_ chief without being observed.

Perfectly aware of this scrutiny, but calmly oblivious to it, Peter Gross stepped out of the boat and directed the sailors who rowed it to return to their ship. As their oars bit the water he faced the path that wound up the hillside and walked along it at a dignified and easy pace.

His sharp ears caught the incessant rustle of leaves, a rustle not made by the breeze, and the soft grinding of bits of coral under the pressure of naked feet.

Once he surprised a dusky face in the bush, but his glance roved to the next object in his line of vision in placid unconcern. As he mounted the rise he made for the _controlleur's_ home, strolling along as calmly as though he were on a Batavia lane.

"_Duivel noch toe!_" Muller exclaimed as the boat returned to the ship.

"He is coming here alone." His voice had an incredulous ring as though he half doubted the evidence of his own senses.

Van Slyck's eyes danced with satisfaction, and his saturnine smile was almost Mephistophelian.

"By Na.s.sau, I was right, after all, _mynheer_," he exclaimed. "He's an a.s.s of a Yankee that Van Schouten is having some sport with in sending him here."

"There may be something behind this, _kapitein_," Muller cautioned apprehensively, but Van Slyck cut him short.

"Behind this, _mynheer_? The fool does not even know how to maintain the dignity due his office. Would he land this way, like a pedler with his pack, if he did? Oh, we are going to have some rare sport--"

Van Slyck's merriment broke loose in a guffaw.

"You-you will not do anything violent, _kapitein_?" Muller asked apprehensively.

"Violent?" Van Slyck exclaimed. "I wouldn't hurt him for a thousand guilders, _mynheer_. He's going to be more fun than even you."

The frank sneer that accompanied the remark made the captain's meaning sufficiently clear to penetrate even so sluggish a mind as the _controlleur's_. He reddened, and an angry retort struggled to his lips, but he checked it before it framed itself into coherent language.

He was too dependent on Van Slyck, he realized, to risk offending the latter now, but for the first time in their acquaintanceship his negative dislike of his more brilliant a.s.sociate deepened to a positive aversion.

"What are we going to do, _kapitein_?" he asked quietly.

"Welcome him, _mynheer_!" Again the sardonic smile. "Treat him to some of your fine cigars and a bottle of your best Hollands. Draw him out, make him empty his belly to us. When we have sucked him dry and drenched him with liquor we will pack him back to the _Prins_ to tell Kapitein Enckel what fine fellows we are. To-morrow we'll receive him with all ceremony--I'll instruct him this afternoon how a resident is installed in his new post and how he must conduct himself.

"Enckel will leave here without a suspicion, Mynheer Gross will be ready to trust even his purse to us if we say the word, and we will have everything our own way as before. But s-s-st! Here he comes!" He lifted a restraining hand. "Lord, what a shoulder of beef! Silence, now, and best your manners, _mynheer_. Leave the talking to me."

Peter Gross walked along the kenari-tree shaded lane between the evergreen hedges clipped with characteristic Dutch primness to a perfect plane. Behind him formed a growing column of natives whose curiosity had gotten the better of their diffidence.

The resident's keen eyes instantly ferreted out Van Slyck and Muller in the shadows of the veranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. Mounting the steps of the porch, he stood for a moment in dignified expectancy, his calm, gray eyes taking the measure of each of its occupants.

An apprehensive shiver ran down Muller's spine as he met Peter Gross's glance--those gray eyes were so like the silent, inscrutable eyes of the stranger in de Jonge's chair whom he saw in his dream. It was Van Slyck who spoke first.