Back and forth across the checkered floor the girl wove her dance, tracing patterns intricate as lace from Canary or the looms of spiders over the marble with the soft soles of her velvet slippers, the chiming bells at her wrists and ankles keeping time to the calling, luring tune of the old hag and her blind musicians with the consummate art of a Spanish castanet dancer following the music with her hand cymbals.
At last the dance was done.
Shaking like a leaf with the intoxication of her own rhythmic movements, Miriam flung herself full length face downward, before Goonong Besar, and lay upon the marble floor in utter, abject self-abasement.
What he said to her we did not understand, for the words were in harsh Malayan, but he must have given her permission to go, for she rose from her prostration like a dog expecting punishment when its master relents, and ran from the room, bracelets and anklets ringing time to her panic flight, pearls clicking together as they swayed with the motion of her sarong.
The old crone rose, too, and led her blind companions from the room, and we three sat staring at each other under the winking candles’ light with the two impassive Malay guards standing motionless behind their master’s chair.
“DO YOU THINK SHE is beautiful?” Goonong Besar asked as he lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the copper ceiling.
“Beautiful?” de Grandin gasped, “Mon Dieu, Monsieur, she is wonderful, she is magnificent, she is superb. Death of my life, but she is divine! Never have I seen such a dancer; never such, such—nom de Dieu, I am speechless as the fish! In all the languages I know there are no words to describe her!”
“And you, Dr. Trowbridge, what do you think of my little Miriam?” Goonong addressed me.
“She is very lovely,” I acknowledged, feeling the words foolishly inadequate.
“Ha, ha,” he laughed good-naturedly. “Spoken with true Yankee conservatism, by Jove.
“And that, gentlemen,” he continued, “leads us to an interesting little proposition I have to make you. But first you will smoke? You’ll find these cigars really good. I import them from Havana.” He passed the polished cedar humidor across the table and held a match for us to light our selections of the expensive tobacco.
“Now, then,” he commenced, inhaling a deep lungful of smoke, “first a little family history, then my business proposition. Are you ready, gentlemen?”
De Grandin and I nodded, wondering mutely what the next chapter in this novel of incredible surprises would be.
6
“WHEN WE MET SO auspiciously this afternoon,” our host began in his pleasant voice, “I requested that you call me Goonong Besar. That, however, is what we might call, for want of a better term, merely my nom de l’ile. Actually gentlemen, I am the Almost Honorable James Abingdon Richardson.
“Parbleu, Monsieur,” de Grandin demanded, “how is it you mean that, ‘the Almost Honorable’?”
The young man blew a cloud of fragrant smoke toward the room’s copper ceiling and watched it float upward a moment before he replied: “My father was an English missionary, my mother a native princess. She was not of the Malay blood, but of the dominant Arab strain, and was known as Laila, Pearl of the Islands.
“My father had alienated himself from his family when he and an elder sister deserted the Church of England and, embracing a dissenting creed, came to Malay to spread the gospel of repentance or damnation among the heathen in their blindness.”
He drew thoughtfully at his cigar and smiled rather bitterly as he resumed: “He was a fine figure of a man, that father of mine, six feet tall, blue-eyed and curly-haired, with a deep, compelling voice and the fire of fanaticism burning in his heart. The natives, Arab and Malay alike, took to his fiery gospel as the desert dwellers of Arabia once listened to the preaching of Mohammed, the camel driver. My grandfather, a pirate prince with a marble palace and a thousand slaves of his own, was one of the converts, and came to the mission bringing his ten-year-old daughter, Laila, with him. He left her at the mission school to learn the gentle teachings of the Prophet of Nazareth. She stayed there four years.”
Again our host paused, puffing silently at his cigar, seemingly attempting to marshal his thoughts. “I believe I said my father was a dissenting clergyman? Yes, so I did, to be sure. Had he been a member of the established church things might have been different. The established English clergy are bad enough, with their fox hunting and general worldliness, but they’re usually sportsmen. When she was a scant fifteen years old—women of the East mature more rapidly than your Western women, you know—Laila, the Pearl of the Islands, came back to her father’s palace of marble and cedar, bearing a little boy baby in her arms. The charitable Christian sister of the missionary had driven her out of the mission settlement when she learned that she (the sister) was about to have a little nephew whose birth was not pre-sanctified by a wedding ring.
“The old pirate prince was furious. He would have put his daughter and her half-caste child to death and swooped down on the mission with fire and dagger, but my mother had learned much of Christian charity during her stay at the school. She was sure, if she went to my father with as many pearls as her hands could hold, and with a dowry of rubies strung round her neck, he would receive her as his wife—er—make an honest woman of her, as the saying goes.
“However, one thing and another prevented her return to the mission for three years, and when we finally got there we found my reverend sire had taken an English lady to wife.
“Oh, he took the jewels my mother brought—no fear of his refusing—and in return for them he permitted us to live in the settlement as native hangers-on. She, a princess, and the daughter of generations of princesses, scrubbed floors and baked bread in the house presided over by my father’s wife and I, my father’s first-born son, duly christened with his name, fetched and carried for my father’s younger sons.
“They were hard, those days at the mission school. The white boys who were my half-brothers overlooked no chance to remind me of mother’s shame and my own disgrace. Humility and patience under affliction were the lessons my mother and I had ground into us day by day while we remained there.
“Then, when I was a lad of ten years or so, my father’s cousin, Viscount Abingdon, broke his neck at a fox hunt, and, as he died without issue, my father became a member of England’s landed gentry, and went back home to take over the title and the entails. He borrowed on his expectancy before he left and offered my mother money to have me educated as a clerk in some trader’s store, but my mother, for all her years of servitude, was still a princess of royal blood. Also she remembered enough Scripture to quote, ‘Thy money perish with thee.’ So she spat in his face and went back to the palace of her father, telling him that her husband was dead.
“I was sent to school in England—oh, yes, I’m a public school man, Winchester, you know—and I was down from my first term at Cambridge when the war broke out in 1914.
“Why should I have fought for England? What had England or the English ever done for me? It was the call of the blood—the English blood—perhaps. At any rate I joined up and was gazetted to a London regiment. Everything was death or glory those days, you know. ‘For King and Country,’ and all that sort of tosh. Racial lines were wiped out, and every man, whatever his color or creed, was for the common cause. Rot!
“I came into the officers’ mess one night after a hard day’s drill, and was presented to a young man from one of the guards regiments. ‘Lieutenant Richardson,’ my captain said, ‘this is Lieutenant Richardson. Queer coincidence, you chaps are both James Abingdon Richardson. Ought to be great pals on that account, what?”
“The other Lieutenant Richardson looked me over from head to foot, then repeated distinctly, so everyone in the room could hear and understand. ‘James, my boots need polishing. Attend to it.’ It was the same order he had given me at the mission school a hundred times when we were lads together. He was Lieutenant the Honorable James Abingdon Richardson, legitimate elde
st son of Viscount Abingdon. I was …”
He broke off, staring straight before him a moment, then: “There was a devil of a row. Officers weren’t supposed to beat other officers into insensibility in company mess, you know. I was dismissed from the service, and came back to the islands.
“My grandfather was dead; so was my mother. I was monarch of all I surveyed—if I was willing not to look too far—and since my return I have consecrated my life to repaying my debt to my father on such of his race as crossed my path.
“The hunting has been fairly good, too. White men are such fools! Ship after ship has run aground on the rocks here, sometimes in answer to my signal rockets, sometimes mistaking the red and green lamps on the hill up yonder for ships’ lights.
“It’s been profitable. Nearly every ship so far has contained enough loot to make the game distinctly worth the trouble. I must admit your ship was somewhat of a disappointment in respect of monetary returns, but then I have had the pleasure of your company; that’s something.
“I keep a crew of Papuans around to do the dirty work, and let ’em eat a few prisoners now and then by way of reward—don’t mind an occasional helping of ‘long pig’ myself, as a matter of fact, provided it’s a white one.
“But”—he smiled unpleasantly—“conditions aren’t ideal, yet. I still have to install electricity in the house and rig up a wireless apparatus—I could catch more game that way—and then there’s the question of women. Remember how Holy Writ says, ‘It is not good for man to dwell alone’? I’ve found it out, already.
“Old Umera, the woman who played the drum tonight, and the slave girl, Miriam, are the only women in the establishment, thus far, but I intend to remedy that soon. I shall send to one of the larger islands and buy several of the most beautiful maidens available within the next few months, and live as befits a prince—a pirate prince, even as my grandfather was.
“Now, white men”—his suave manner dropped from him like a mask let down, and implacable hatred glared from his dark eyes—“this is my proposition to you. Before I establish my seraglio it is necessary that I possess suitable furniture. I can not spare any of my faithful retainers for the purpose of attending my women, but you two come into my hands providentially. Both of you are surgeons—you shall perform the necessary operations on each other. It is a matter of indifference to me which of you operates first—you may draw straws for the privilege if you wish—but it is my will that you do this thing, and my will is law on this island.”
Both de Grandin and I looked at him in speechless horror, but he took no notice of amazement. “You may think you will refuse,” he told us, “but you will not. Captain Van Thun, of the Dutch steamer Van Damm, and his first mate were offered the same chance and refused it. They chose to interview a little pet I keep about the premises as an alternative: But when the time for the interview came both would gladly have reconsidered their decision. This house is the one place in the world where a white man must keep his word, willy-nilly. Both of them were obliged to carry out their bargain to the letter—and I can not say the prestige of the pure Caucasian breed was strengthened by the way they did it.
“Now, I will give you gentlemen a greater opportunity for deliberation than I gave the Dutchmen. You shall first be allowed to see my pet, then decide whether you will accept my offer or not. But I warn you beforehand, whatever decision you make must be adhered to.
“Come.” He turned to the two armed Malays who stood behind his chair and barked an order. Instantly de Grandin and I were covered by their pistols, and the scowling faces behind the firearms’ sights told us we might expect no quarter if the order to fire were given.
“Come,” Goonong Besar—or Richardson—repeated imperiously, “walk ahead, you two, and remember, the first attempt either of you makes to escape will mean a bullet through his brain.”
WE MARCHED DOWN A series of identical corridors as bewildering as the labyrinth of Crete, mysterious stone doors thudding shut behind us from time to time, other doors swinging open in the solid walls as our guards pressed cunningly concealed springs in the walls or floor. Finally we brought up on a sort of colonnaded porch, a tiled footpath bordered with a low stone parapet from which a row of carved stone columns rose to a concave ceiling of natural stone. Below the balcony’s balustrade stretched a long, narrow pool of dead-motionless water between abrupt vertical walls of rock, and, some two hundred feet away, through the arch of a natural cave, the starlit tropical sky showed like a little patch of freedom before our straining eyes. The haze which had thickened the air the previous night must have cleared away, for rays of the bright, full moon painted a “path to Spain” over the waters at the cavern’s mouth, and sent sufficient light as far back as our balcony to enable us to distinguish an occasional tiny ripple on the glassy surface below us.
“Here, pretty, pretty!” our captor called, leaning forward between two columns. “Come up and see the brave white men who may come to play with you. Here, pretty pet; come up, come up!”
We stared into the purple waters like lost souls gazing on the hell prepared for them, but no motion agitated the depths.
“Sulky brute!” the half-caste exclaimed, and snatched a pistol from the girdle of one of his attendants. “Come up,” he repeated harshly. “Damn you, come when I call!” He tossed the weapon into the pool below.
De Grandin and I uttered a gasp of horror in unison, and I felt his nails bite into my arm as his strong slender fingers gripped me convulsively.
AS THOUGH THE PISTOL had been superheated and capable of setting the water in the cave boiling by its touch, the deep, blue-black pool beneath us suddenly woke to life. Ripples—living, groping ripples—appeared on the pool’s smooth face and long, twisting arms, sinuous as snakes, thick as fire-hose, seemed waving just under the surface, flicking into the air now and again and displaying tentacles roughened with great, wart-like protuberances. Something like a monster bubble, transparent-gray like a jelly-fish, yet, oddly, spotted like an unclean reptile, almost as big around as the umbrellas used by teamsters on their wagons in summer-time, and, like an umbrella, ribbed at regular intervals, rose from the darker water, and a pair of monstrous, hideous white eyes, large as dinner plates, with black pupils large as saucers, stared greedily, unwinkingly, at us.
“Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” de Grandin breathed. “The sea-devil; the giant octopus!”
“Quite so,” Goonong Besar agreed affably, “the giant octopus. What he grasps he holds forever, and he grasps all he can reach. A full-grown elephant thrown into that water would have no more chance of escape than a minnow—or, for unpleasant example, than you gentlemen would. Now, perhaps you realize why Captain Van Thun and his first officer wished they had chosen to enter my—er—employ, albeit in a somewhat extraordinary capacity. I did not afford them a chance of viewing the alternative beforehand, as I have you, however. Now that you have had your chance, I am sure you will take the matter under serious advisement before you refuse.
“There is no hurry; you will be given all tonight and tomorrow to arrive at a decision. I shall expect your answer, at dinner tomorrow. Good gentlemen, my boys will show you to your room. Good night, and—er—may I wish you pleasant dreams?”
With a mocking laugh he stepped quickly back into the shadows, we heard the sound we had come to recognize as the closing of one of the hidden stone doors, and found ourselves alone upon the balcony over-looking the den of the giant octopus.
“Bon Dieu!” de Grandin cried despairingly, “Trowbridge, my friend, they make a mistake, those people who insist the devil dwells in hell. Parbleu! What is that?”
The noise which startled him was the shuffling of bare brown feet. The tongueless youths who acted as our valets de chambre were coming reluctantly toward us down the passageway, their eyes rolling in fearful glances toward the balustrade beyond which the devil of the sea lurked in his watery lair.
“En bien,” the Frenchman shrugged, “it is the two devilkins again. Lead
on, mes enfants; any place is better than this threshold of hell.”
7
“AND NOW,” HE ANNOUNCED as he dropped into one of the bedroom’s wicker chairs and lighted a cigarette, “we are in what you Americans would call a tight fix, Friend Trowbridge. To accede to that half-caste hellion’s proposition would be to dishonor ourselves forever—that is unthinkable. But to be eaten up by that so infernal octopus, that, too, is unthinkable. Morbleu, had I known then what I know now I should have demanded one thousand pounds a day from those Messieurs Lloyd and then refused their offer. As your so splendid soldiers were wont to say during the war, we are, of a surety, S.O.L., my friend.”
Beneath the bamboo bedstead across the room a slight rustling sounded. I looked apathetically toward the bed, indifferent to any fresh horror which might appear; but, wretched as I was, I was not prepared for the apparition which emerged.
Stripped of her gorgeous raiment of pineapple gauze, a sarong and jacket of the cheapest native cotton inadequately covering her glorious body, an ivory-wood button replacing her diamond nose-stud, her feet bare and no article of jewelry adorning her, Miriam, the dancer, crept forth and flung herself to her knees before de Grandin.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she begged in a voice choked with tears, “have pity on me, I implore you. Be merciful to me, as you would have another in your place be pitiful to your sister, were she in mine.”
“Morbleu, child, is it of me you ask pity?” de Grandin demanded. “How can I, who can not even choose my own death, show compassion to you?”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 5
