The Pointing Man Part 21

"It is even so," agreed the proprietor, and he hurried away from the noose of talk that Leh Shin would have cast around him.

The beggar, having followed Leh Shin as far as the opium den, returned along the Colonnade and knocked at the door of the house where Shiraz waited anxiously for his master.

"Is my bath prepared, Shiraz? I must wash before I sleep, and I shall sleep late."

Coryndon was weary. No one who has not watched through hours of strain and suspense knows the utter weariness of mind and body that follows upon the long effort of close attention, and he fell upon his bed in a huddled heap and slept for hour after hour, worn out in brain and body.

XVII

TELLS HOW CORYNDON LEARNS FROM THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH WHAT THE REV.

FRANCIS HEATH NEVER TOLD HIM.

When Coryndon sat up in his bed, and recalled himself with a jerk from the drowsiness of night to the wakefulness of broad daylight, he called Shiraz to give to him instructions.

After dark, his master told him, he was going to return to the Cantonments, and during his absence there were some matters which he had decided to leave unreservedly in the hands of Shiraz. He was to cultivate his acquaintance with Leh Shin, the Chinaman, worming his way into his confidence and encouraging him to speak fully of the old hatred that was still like live fire between him and the wealthy curio dealer.

Revenge may or may not take the shape and substance of the original wrong done, and the limited intelligence of the Chinaman would suggest payment in the same coin, so it was necessary for Coryndon to know the actual facts of the ancient grudge. Further than this, Shiraz was to go to the shop of Mhtoon Pah, and discover anything he could in the course of conversation with the Burman.

"Mark well all that is said, that when I return it may be disclosed to mine eyes through thy spectacles," he concluded, tying the ragged ends of his head-scarf over his forehead.

He went down the staircase with a slow, dragging step, leaning on the rail of the Colonnade when he got out into the street, and halting, with a vacant stare, outside the shop of Leh Shin.

"So thy devils have not yet caught thee and scalded thee with oil, or burned thee in quicklime?" jeered the boy, as he watched a coolie sweep out the shop.

He was chewing a raw onion, and he swung his legs idly, for there was nothing to do, and, on the whole, he was glad to have the mad Burman to bait for half an hour's entertainment.

"The sickness is heavy upon me, my legs are loaded as with wet sand, and my mouth is parched like a rock in the desert," whined the Burman plaintively.

"Nay, nay, not _thy_ legs, and _thy_ tongue. The legs and the mouth of the evil man, thy friend, O dolt."

The Burman shook his head stupidly.

"The will of the Holy Ones is that I shall recover, and my friend has said that I shall go a journey. I go by the terrain this night at sunset."

"Whither doth he send thee, unclean one?"

The Burman smiled with a sudden look of cunning.

"That is a word unspoken, and neither will I tell it. Thy desire to know what concerns thee not is as great as thy fatness."

With a doggedness that is often part of some forms of mania, the Burman squatted in the dust, and under no provocation could he be induced to speak. After midday he indicated by lifting his fingers to his mouth that he intended to go in search of food; having worked Leh Shin's a.s.sistant into a state of perspiring wrath by the simple process of reiterating in pantomime that he was dumb. It must be admitted that Coryndon got no small amount of pleasure out of his morning's entertainment, and he doubled himself up as though in pain as he dragged himself back to the house.

The vanished beggar's tracks were entirely obliterated, and when the Burman went off in a _gharry_ in company with Shiraz, the whole street knew that he was being sent away on a secret mission of great importance.

To know something that other people do not know is to be in some way their superior. It is a popular fallacy to believe that we all of us are gifted with special insight. The dullest bore believes it of himself, but when it comes to the possession of an absolute fact superiority becomes unmistakable, particularly in circ.u.mscribed localities, and Leh Shin's a.s.sistant remembered how the sudden dumbness of the crazy Burman had irked his own soul. He told a little of what he professed to know, and having done so, refused to admit more, and so it was current in the Bazaar that the friend of the rich Punjabi was gone to receive money paid for jewels, and that the place of his destination was known only to Leh Shin's a.s.sistant, who, having sworn on oath, would by no means divulge the name of the place.

Even Leh Shin, who awoke late, appeared interested, and asked questions that made the gross, flabby boy think hard before he replied; and the mystery that attached itself to the departure of the Burman lent an added interest to Shiraz, who returned after the usual hour of prayer at the Mosque, and paced slowly up the street, meditating upon a verse from the Koran. The evening light softened and the shadows grew long, making the Colonnade dark a full hour before the street outside was wrapped in the smoky gloom of twilight and the charcoal fires were lighted to cook the evening meal, and by the time that the first clear globes of electric light dotted Paradise Street Coryndon was back in his room and dressed ready to go out to dinner.

Hartley received the wanderer with enthusiasm, and began at once by telling him that he had an invitation for him which was growing stale by long keeping. Mrs. Wilder was giving a very small party and both the Head of the Police and his friend were invited.

"I accepted definitely for myself, and conditionally for you," said Hartley cheerfully. "Now I will ring up Wilder and tell him that the prodigal has reappeared, and that you will come."

Coryndon submitted to the inevitable with a good grace; it was one of his best social qualifications, and arose from a keen sensitiveness that made it nearly impossible for him ever to disappoint anyone. He had hoped for a quiet evening, when he might expect to get to bed early and have time to think over every tiny detail of his time in the Mangadone Bazaar; but as this was not possible, he agreed with sufficient alacrity to deceive his kind host.

His face was drawn and tired, and his eyes were heavy; he noticed this as he glanced into his gla.s.s, but after all it did not matter. His social importance was small, and for to-night he was nothing more than an adjunct of Hartley, a mere postscript put in out of formal politeness. He was not going in order to please Mrs. Wilder--though, as she appeared on his mental list of names, she had her place in the structure that filled his mind--but to please Hartley. Any time would have done for Mrs. Wilder, she was but a cypher in the total, but if he had begged off to-night he would have had to hurt Hartley. Coryndon could never get away from the other man's point of view; it dogged him in great things and in small, and he was obliged to realize Hartley's pleasure in seeing him, and his further pleasure in carrying him off to a house where he himself enjoyed life thoroughly. Coryndon could as easily have disappointed a child, or been cruel to a small, wagging puppy as to Hartley in his present mood.

He knew that he would have to shut the door upon his dominating thought, unless something occurred to open it during the evening. Women liked to play with fire, and he wondered if Mrs. Wilder would show any inclination to fiddle with gunpowder, but he hardly expected that she would, though she had played some part in the extensive drama that reached from Heath's bungalow to the Colonnade in the Chinese quarter, leaving a gap between that his brain struggled with in vain.

It was like the imaginable s.p.a.ce between life and death, where both conditions existed, and one was the key to the other. Something was lacking. One small master touch wanting to lay the whole thing bare of mystery. Coryndon's weary eyes reflected the state of his mind. He felt like an inventor who is baffled for the lack of a tiny clue that makes the impossible natural and easy, or a composer who hears a refrain and cannot call it into birth in clear defiant chords. To think too much when thought cannot carry the mind over the limiting barrier is to spend substance on fruitless effort, and Coryndon deliberately shut the door of his mind and put the key away before he started out with Hartley.

The night was clear as the two men went off together hatless through the soft moonlight. Neither Coryndon nor Hartley talked much as they walked by a short cut across the park to the Wilders' bungalow, a servant carrying a lantern going before them like a dim will-o'-the-wisp; the yellow lamplight paling into an ineffectual blur against the clear moonlight.

"I think it is only ourselves," said Hartley after a long pause. "You are looking a bit done, Coryndon, so you'll be glad if it isn't a late night."

Coryndon agreed, and conversation flagged again. They crossed the road, turned up the avenue and were lost in the shadows of the trees, coming out again into a white bay of light outside the door.

Everyone, man or woman, who is endowed at birth with a sensitive nature is subject to occasional inrushes of detachment that without warning cut him off from realities for moments or hours, converting everyday matters into the consistency of dream-life. It was through this medium that Coryndon saw Mrs. Wilder when he came into the large upstairs drawing-room. It would have annoyed her to know that she appeared indefinite and shadowy to his mind, just as it annoyed Alice when she was told that she was only "Something in the Red King's dream," but Coryndon could not help his sensations. Mrs. Wilder was smiling with her careless, easy, confident smile, and yet he saw only an unaccounted bit of the puzzle, that he could not fit in. She was dressed in the latest fashion, and talked with a kind of regal amiability, but nevertheless, she was not a real woman, a real hostess, or a positive ent.i.ty; she was vague, and the touch of her floating personality added to the baffled sensation that drained Coryndon's mind of concentrated force, and made him physically exhausted.

Wilder had something to say to Hartley, and Coryndon handed himself over like a coat or an umbrella to Mrs. Wilder, who, he knew, was placing a low valuation upon him, and was already a little impatient at his lack of vitality. She was calling him a bore, behind her fine, hard eyes, and having exhausted Mangadone in a few sentences, wondered what sort of bore he really was. There were golf bores, fishing bores, and shooting bores, but Coryndon hardly appeared to belong to any of those families, and she began to suspect him of "superiority," a type of bore aggressive to others of his cult. Mrs. Wilder did not tolerate a type to which she herself undoubtedly owned to some slight connection, and she gave up all effort to awaken interest in the slim, weary young man, who looked half-asleep.

"Mr. Heath ought to be here directly," she said, in her loud, clear voice. "Draycott, don't forget to ask him to say grace."

If she had got up and taken Coryndon by the shoulders and shaken him, the effect could not have been more marked and sudden. All the dull feeling of detachment cleared off at once, and he knew that his senses were sharp and acute; his bodily fatigue fell away, and as he moved in his chair his eyes turned towards the door.

"I wish he would hurry," growled Wilder, a prey to the pessimism of the half-hour before dinner. "He is inexcusably late as it is."

As though his words had summoned the Rev. Francis Heath, footsteps mounting the staircase followed Wilder's remark, and the clergyman came into the room. Immediately upon his coming, conversation became general, and a few moments later the party was seated round a small table kept for intimate gatherings, and placed in the centre of the large teak-panelled room. An arrangement of plumbago and maidenhair, and pale blue shaded candles casting a dim light, carried out the saxe blue effect that Mrs. Wilder had evolved with the a.s.sistance of a ladies'

paper that dealt with "effective and original table decoration."

In spite of Mrs. Wilder's efforts, a.s.sisted as they were by Hartley, conversation flagged for the first two courses. Heath was not exactly awkward, but he was conscious of the fact that he and Hartley had had an unpleasant interview, buried by the pa.s.sing of a few weeks, but by no means peaceful in its grave. There was just a suggestion of strain in his manner, and he was evidently carrying through a duty in being there at all, rather than out for pleasant society.

Coryndon observed him carefully, particularly when he talked to his hostess. If she was helping to screen him, the clergyman was too honest not to show some sign of grat.i.tude either in his manner or in his deep-set eyes, and yet no such indication was evident. Coryndon disa.s.sociated his mind from the history of the case, and saw austerity flavoured with a near approach to disapproval. Judging by externals, the Rev. Francis Heath held no very exalted opinion of his hostess.

"She has done nothing for him," he said to himself. "If obligation exists, it is the other way round," and he proceeded to watch Mrs.

Wilder's manner towards her clerical guest with heightening interest.

Usually she was very sure of herself, more especially so in her own house, and surrounded with the evidences of her husband's official rank.

When Mrs. Wilder talked to the poor, insignificant Padre who could be of no real social a.s.sistance to her, she changed her manner, the manner that she directed pointedly towards Coryndon, and became quelled and softened.

Mrs. Wilder, propitiatory and diffident, was, Coryndon felt, Mrs. Wilder caught out somehow and somewhere; perhaps on the night of the 29th of July, and as he considered it, Coryndon knew that the shoe was on a much smaller foot than Hartley had measured for it, and that the secret understanding between Heath and Mrs. Wilder was one-sided in its benefits.

Hartley had recounted the story of the fainting fit as a landmark by which he remembered where he was himself, and, adding this fact to what he observed, Coryndon put Mrs. Wilder on one side and mentally drew a red-ink line under her total. He knew all he needed to know about her, and she had no further interest for his mind. He talked to her husband when once he had satisfied himself definitely, and as dinner wore on the atmosphere became more genial and less strained than when it had begun.

"By the way," said Wilder carelessly, "was it ever discovered how that fellow Rydal got clear of the country?"